MESSINA. QUITTING WORK. [Page 258.]
ARRIVAL OF THE BARBER. [Page 265.]
only at bedtime. There is no theatre, no place of amusement, not even a cinematograph in Messina. At sunset the young sailors, who have worked all day and are not yet tired, wrestle and box together, for the lust of life that is in them. A crowd of men and boys gathers to watch and applaud; if the sounds of labor are welcome in this silent city, the joyous sounds of play are twice welcome. Between nine and ten J., who works in a little cubby-hole shut off from the captain’s office, is ready to turn in. He has stood all day at his drawing-board, making the plans as fast—or almost—as Belknap asks for them. His bed is “delightfully comfortable;” the “spring” is given by nailing the planks at one end of the bunk and leaving them free at the other, so that they have some play; mattress and pillow are of good sweet seaweed.
“Last night was chilly,” he writes, “but thanks to the traveling rug, in addition to two blankets and Hooper’s coat, I was quite warm. I got the tip from a native that the nights were cold and passed on my acquired knowledge, but it was unheeded by the others, who got left. I knew I should be too sleepy to put the extra things on, so I plumped them all on before I went to sleep. Tonight we are going to be supplied with extra blankets. It’s now a little after one o’clock and the heat is quite uncomfortable; it seems stupid to be talking of blankets.”
By ten all lights are out except Belknap’s, always the last. Every night he knots up the business of the past day; makes each record, answers all letters, plans out the next morning’s work. When he is not at work elsewhere, the Chief sits in his office writing those endless despatches, letters, reports, that are not the easiest part of his prodigious labor. Read them over now: it seems impossible that the man, who carried on this minute detailed correspondence, could have found time for anything else. You feel the character of the writer in every page; the will of iron, the heart of a child, the training of a sailor who, in order to command, learned first to obey. Nowhere in all this mass of letters and reports will you find Belknap “posing” before his correspondent or that imaginary audience, the world, that may always get a sight of such documents; everywhere, with a skill not born of chance, whenever he can “throw the limelight” on one of his men, he does so with a generous hand. Belknap is one of those natural leaders of men, who seem providentially to arise in great emergencies. His tireless energy, his cheerful courage are positively infectious; his example and influence are felt in every phase of the enterprise of which he was the leader.
Just what was his work? To bring order out of chaos. Men are the instruments of mankind; the race chooses the individual to carry out its desires, as the sculptor his tools. The nation, torn by a sister’s anguish, acted first with the heart of Roosevelt, second with the mind of Griscom, third with the will of Belknap; these three men were the triumvirate who put through the imperial thing America desired. The records of a man of action are brief; for him it is the doing that delights, not the telling; and yet in reading over Belknap’s report one comes, now and again, upon a pearl of pathos, a diamond of humor, that makes the formal document a precious thing, that makes the camp by the Torrente Zaera one of those that will not be forgotten.
In these early days ten American carpenters superintended the Italian workmen (later there were more). These skilled mechanics drilled and trained their men with care and energy, for among other things the camp by the Torrente Zaera was a school of carpentry. Perhaps five per cent. of the Italians were really fair workmen; the majority were careless and slovenly at their craft. Many of them had never worked at anything, let alone carpentry. The houses they built were the least part of our carpenters’ good work; they established a standard of excellence unknown hitherto in a community where, though the good St. Joseph is honored, his trade is sadly slighted.